The Dangerous Book for Boys, Conn Iggulden, Hal Iggulden.
Sometimes, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I find myself out of the loop on subjects of great importance. I surf and I browse; I peruse news sites and blogs and magazine stands and mega-bookstores, yet somehow or other I missed the last big peace demonstration, and worse, I missed the early word on the Iggulden brothers' wonderful Dangerous Book for Boys.
My partner Debbie Siegel (aka Girl w/Pen) has watched me struggle with the intent of this blog of mine over the past year or so, and has endured my droning on and on about the lost mysteries of boyhood and how kids these days are just so jaded; so when Mother Talk dedicated their second Blog Tour to said Dangerous Book she knew who to forward the email to. Of course, when I saw the cover design I knew I had to order it; when I unwrapped it I experienced a kind of Christmas morning giddiness.
Dangerous is a glaring anachronism: with its red clothbound covers and retro design circa 1910, it resembles some forgotten and miraculously preserved first edition of Frank L. Baum. No glossy dustjacket, no blurbs, no Oprah sticker (please, God, spare it the Oprah sticker), it exists outside of the moment, outside of media. Inside, there's no rhyme or reason—— just pure careening no-nonsense wonder and how-to. It reminds me a little of another recent anachronistic publishing phenomenon, Schott's various Miscellanies (and Almanacs and Concordances and whatever else in God's name Ben Schott's got coming down the pike). Like Schott's books it takes the randomness of web-surfing and formalizes it as a literary experience outside of the headlong rush of information familiar to Generation Y. It's apparent that The Dangerous Book for Boys has no beginning, middle or end. It is meant to be read and perused, like the World Book or the Encyclopedia Britannica, rather than scanned, tabbed and bookmarked.
Its contents have a distinctly Anglophile charm: segueing from stickball and rugby rules to Morse code and cloud formations, Dangerous seems intended for some unlikely jock-geek hybrid, equal parts introvert and extrovert. In fact, what with chapters on polar exploration, navigation, historic battles and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, some might argue that the Igguldens have compiled a kind of throwback primer for young male WASP imperialist-adventurers educated in the classics; indeed a great part of the book's appeal is its obstinately old-world presentation (the Seven Wonders are illustrated by what look like reproductions of Victorian postcards). The Age of Imperialism did coincide with the broader cultural impact of the Industrial Revolution, and so technology enabled not only global travel for the original tourist class, but also the wide dissemination of travel literature to a reading public, including the first generations of young armchair adventurers (boys and girls: remember lonely little Jane Eyre sitting cross-legged "like a Turk" on the window seat, browsing a natural history of the "bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland"). Some boys of those generations may have ended up becoming colonial administrators and big-game hunters, but other boys and girls became anthropologists and naturalists for the enlightenment of future generations.
Ultimately, what makes this treasure-trove of a book truly “dangerous” is the idea that a life of sensations and engagement with the world can dovetail with intellectual curiosity, and that any boy (or girl!) with a healthy interest in the world as seen on a map or from high up in a tree house might find a richer sense of place than in any gaming platform, or in a multitude of Facebooks.
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